


Thicker Than Water

by ginkyou



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Vampires, a lot less sexy and a lot more sorrowful than these tags might imply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 11:59:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16428989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginkyou/pseuds/ginkyou
Summary: In which a witcher and a vampire try to process the bloodshed they saw in Beauclaire, and more blood gets spilled in the process.





	Thicker Than Water

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't really go as far with this as I could've so I feel like this fic ended up being neither here nor there but that's just how life be sometimes, I guess. Let me know if you enjoyed it because I honestly don't know how to feel about this fic.
> 
> Light spoilers for the end of Blood and Wine, although I delibaretly avoided making any references to specific endings and left the major events surrounding this open instead.

The evening sun hang hot and heavy over Corvo Bianco, spilling light the color of overripe oranges over the vinyard. The air was thick with moisture, hinting distantly at possible future thunderstorms. Peacocks were crying. Bees buzzed lazily. In the distance, the capital continued to burn.

For now, all that was left was the cleanup. Just like after every war – and a war this truly had been – the people had to return to their beaten, bloodied homes and try to salvage a life in the mess, had to drag some semblance of normality out from under the rubble.

Corvo Bianco had, thanks to the gods or maybe just luck, been spared from destruction. Its cicadas could continue to scream and beg in their ear-piercing rhythms, its olive trees continue to grow undisturbed. But no matter how sheltered from physical ruin the property had been, its inhabitants were just as scarred as all others. Maybe even more so.

 

The wooden table on the front patio was littered with empty wine bottles. Under the table lay a few more. And under the bench right next to it yet another bottle, having rolled there after having been accidentally kicked over. Despite this scene of wanton alcohol consumption, by some freakish and quite frankly rude trick of nature, Geralt of Rivia was not yet drunk, and neither was his companion. Or at least they weren’t drunk  _ enough _ .

 

“What a fucking shitshow,” Geralt muttered. His speech was slurred and quiet but the consonants sounded hard, spat out like olive pits. His forearms were resting on his thighs, his imposing back hunched over.

The figure sitting next to him swirled the wine in his cup, staying silent for an uncharacteristically long amount of time. His long fingernails, some still darkened by stubborn specks of congealed blood, clinked against the glass in contemplation. Then he threw back his drink and sighed. “While I would not have expressed it that way, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment,” Regis – as that was the figure’s name – replied and shook his head in a motion of exhausted dismay.

From the bench, the two of them could only see a sea of trees beyond the confines of Corvo Bianco, dotted here and there with a red roof or two peeking up. The flames, the destruction, the hell that had gone down in the streets of Beauclair laid beyond the edge of their sight. The stench of burnt flesh and crying of newly widowed women, though, could not escape either of their sharpened senses.

Dull thuds of hooves and muffled whinnying from across the patio let them know that Roach was stirring in her late afternoon sleep, maybe spooked by the image of a snake conjured up in a dream, or just disturbed by a mosquito. Geralt and Regis listened in silence until the noises stopped.  “At least this place stayed whole. Never thought I’d be so glad to own a damn vineyard,” Geralt finally said. The wine lingered bitterly on his tongue, or maybe it was the blood. All that blood.

“It’s a home,” Regis offered. He placed his glass on the table, his hand lingering for a contemplative second on its delicate rim. “A place of safety.”

“To be honest,” Geralt said and sighed the heavy sigh of a world-weary man, his voice for a moment much older than he was, “for now I’m really just glad to have a bed secured at all times. Trawling the countryside for an inn that’d let me crash in the corner after everything that went down… wouldn’t have been fun.” Regis agreed silently with a thoughtful nod. In the sky above them, a few swallows flew joyous loops through the peach-pink clouds. Geralt felt heavy at the sight. Heavy and tired.

“You can rest here,” Regis finally said.  _ Rest _ . When had that ever truly been an option for Geralt? Not for as long as he could remember. Not when he had to make a living, when there were still monsters to kill. There was no rest for a witcher. Could not be. Could never be. The only rest a witcher could hope for was a hastily dug grave.

“Right. I could hang my swords up and retire. Sell fine wine for a living.” The joke sounded just as forced and half hearted as it was. Only the corners of Regis’s mouth twitched up in a polite semblance of a smile in reply, but even that seemed like an overreaction. Regis’s dark eyes stayed heavy, resting darkly on some vague spot in the trees beyond the courtyard.

Silence hung between them like fog on morning mountain roads. Geralt scratched at the wine bottle he was holding. A good year. A good wine. He even had a good friend to drink it with. So then why did it taste like ash, like grief, like too much innocent blood spilled over what had seemed like such a trivial affair such a short time ago? He tipped the bottle and quietly watched as the last of its content poured out onto the stone pavement. It had a deep, dark red color, like blood, like innards, like gore dripping out of mangled human bodies… He didn’t want to think about it any longer. His stomach felt tight and bile-sick.

Drawing his eyes and mind away from the liquid now staining the pavement, Geralt turned his head towards Regis. Maybe he’d find some comfort in the dry wit of his old companion.

Regis’s hands were closed tightly, so tightly in fact that his knuckles looked white even against the vampire’s already deathly pale skin. Tension sat deeply in Regis’s shoulders, muscles stiff and straining. Geralt’s eyes flicked up to Regis’s face, eyebrows raised in an offer of quizzical compassion.

Regis took in a deep, shaking breath. “You still stink of death,” he answered Geralt’s unspoken question. His words were bitter like moonshine, and his lips tense, strained so hard they were almost quivering. Geralt felt a sting of regret in his chest.

“I know,” he answered simply; sadly. Not even the finest soaps of Toussaint could wash the smell away. Not from a witcher. Not after everything that had happened. Geralt continued to watch Regis for a few moments, eyes drifting over his face as he tried to read him, but there was not much to be read but grief and fatigue.

Regis looked old. More than centuries old, millenia old, billenia old. Older even than he had any right to be.

An image flashed across the witcher’s mind. It blindsided him, choking the breath out of his throat, more of a split second impression than an actual thought. Soldiers. Claws. Tearing flesh. And under it, eternal and burning, thirst, for an eternally unattainable home, for an unreachable place beyond a closed door, and more closer, more tangible, more pressing, the thirst for –

Geralt gasped in a deep breath and shook his head forcefully like a horse shaking off a fly. The image disappeared quickly, leaving his head to feel as if it had been torn open. Regis clicked his tongue apologetically and looked off to the side, brows furrowed and eyes wide.

“My deepest apologies,” Regis said, tense and tight as a bowstring. The edges of his words were shaking. “I should have remembered that witchers’ senses don’t mix well with vampires’ psychic abilities.”

Geralt, a hand pressed against his eyes as if to force the thought out of his mind, said nothing. He coughed out a short grunt. As he lowered his hand, he blinked forcefully, wiping away the last remnants of the psychic transmission. He leaned back against the backrest of the bench and groaned. Dark shadows danced in the edges of his vision, withdrawing only slowly as he breathed deeply in and out. His head pounded as if he’d just woken up after a night of drinking the cheapest liquor available. And just like with cheap liquor, the image’s aftertaste still lingered; that need, that thirst, still there, biting at the back of his mind.

Geralt’s hand brushed against something leathery. His fingers curled around it instinctively, just as they had done uncountable times before. It was his knife’s hilt, wrapped in leather frayed from years of usage. As the image in his mind faded, an idea took form instead.

The knife gleamed a dark wine red in the setting sun. Before Regis could so much as open his mouth, Geralt had pulled it from the sheath that hung from his belt and gripped it tightly, blade hovering over his left palm. “Geralt?” Regis sounded more confused than Geralt had ever heard him before. “What, pray tell, are you doing that for?”

“For you.” He paused. The knife shone softly, an old friend patiently encouraging him. “For us.”

The incision was fast and clean. Geralt barely winced as blood bubbled up and began to drip from the long, straight cut he had made across his palm. He was a professional, after all. Regis seemed to be reeling for another moment, then managed to catch himself. He was a professional, too, after all.

“Geralt, you don’t have to do this.” Regis’s voice sounded distant, as if it was coming from the depths of a well. Geralt did not answer.

In dark, intense concentration Geralt carefully drew his middle and pointer finger over the wound. It felt wet and hot. He could feel Regis’s eyes spellbound by his hand, could hear the breath run hard through his slightly open mouth, whistling past those razor-sharp teeth. Glistening scarlet stained Geralt’s fingers, and Regis was salivating.

Geralt’s gaze wandered from his hand over to Regis. An unspoken suggestion hung between them in the sweltering evening air, heavy with moisture and possibilities. Regis swallowed hard.

He reached out slowly, as if in a dream, and gently took Geralt’s wounded hand in his own with shaking fingers. Regis’s palms were cold and clammy, a frozen block of ice untouched by the scorching Toussaint sun. His breath trembled. Geralt’s blood trickled onto his skin, hot and red and tantalizing. A rogue drop ran down the side of his thumb, where it left a crimson trail like a dried-up riverbed. Regis’s eyes were wide and bloodshot, the coal black of his pupils dilated, swallowing up his iris, as he looked up at Geralt’s face. The silent suggestion had turned into a question, and Geralt nodded slightly, answering to the affirmative.

Geralt’s bloody hand, nestled in Regis’s, moved upwards, softly, slowly. They held eye contact even as Geralt’s fingers were greeted by the slight brush of Regis’s breath, as his fingertips touched Regis’s lips, as his hand came to rest against Regis’s mouth. Only then did Geralt’s face soften, did he let Regis relax, melt, into his palm, into his touch, into the scent of his blood. Regis’s eyes closed, his breaths growing deep. The smell of Geralt’s blood was deep and dark, bittered by mutations and murder. Regis inhaled it reverently, like a connoisseur at a wine tasting. A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat, reverberating in his chest, shaking, shuddering, a darkly mournful noise that trembled with growing lust, thirst, need, want and with a bone-achingly deep regret.

“Ohh, Geralt,” Regis whispered against Geralt’s hand, his voice hoarse and deadly soft. His fingers pushed against Geralt’s skin, pressing Geralt’s wounded palm against his mouth. His nostrils were flared, like a wolf, like a beast, taking in as much as he could and reveling in the scent. His breath caressed Geralt’s palm with all the gentleness of an old lover. “I could rend the flesh from your bones,” he continued, low and lovingly. Geralt could not tell if the burning cold he felt sliding through his veins and dripping from his palm was fear, or something else entirely. “I could break your bones one by one and suck out the sweet, sweet marrow hidden within.” Regis’s voice shook, a primal, instinctual sort of quiver crawling up his throat. “God, Geralt, if you only knew how much I want to tear out your jugular vein and lap up your blood.” As if dotting a letter, he pressed a long, aching kiss against Geralt’s bloody palm. Geralt could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. His head spun.

“Then do it,” he replied, barely hearing himself from afar, breathless, voiceless.

Regis’s head rolled back and he smiled with closed eyes, lips parting to let out a breath. He reminded Geralt of a man hanging over an edge, trying to decide whether to hold on or to let the abyss swallow him. “No,” Regis finally said, still smiling, wistfully maybe, or amusedly, although none of that truly mattered anymore, had never mattered, “while I appreciate the offer, I must decline, Geralt. Not this time. Not this time.”

Geralt felt dizzy, cold, like gangrene, like hemlock. Like a witcher potion or ten too many. He had to clear his throat before he could speak and even then, he heard his voice as if it was coming from a million miles away. “At least give me the courtesy to accept my drink, you damn old fool,” he heard himself saying but all he really felt, all he really saw, were Regis’s hands against his palm and the blood that was dripping down his arm.

Regis did not ask twice. Like a wave crashing against the shore, a searing, sickly kind of pain shot through Geralt’s arm and up into his brain, effectively paralyzing him, his wounded hand cramping up instinctively against the assault but Regis’s mouth was stronger, was faster, its tongue twisting and turning into something no human had any business having in their mouth, sharpening, growing teeth scraping against skin, greed and hunger and eternal thirst all pooling in his mouth as he drank, deeply, gladly, from Geralt’s palm. Regis’s fingernails grew longer and his features grew sharper and Geralt, still conscious somewhere behind the pain, feared for a moment that he had made a mistake but the attack never came, the reigns never came loose. Regis simply drank, drank, drank.

It was not the first time Regis had broken his abstinence – there had been Stygga castle, and Geralt was sure there had been others as well – but it was the first time Geralt had witnessed it happen so closely, so intimately, and it felt pure, sincere, like seeing a lover naked for the first time, just much, much more painful. And after a moment, a year, an eternity, when Regis’s lips finally broke away from Geralt’s skin with a sickeningly wet sound and as Regis let himself fall back against the backrest and closed his eyes, Geralt observed that he looked like any other man, just covered in blood.

Weakened laughter rumbled up from Regis’s chest like thunderclouds rolling into a valley. “Lord,” he moaned. “Geralt, your blood tastes like  _ shit _ .” And a heartbeat later, and without any fanfare, Geralt leaned over and kissed him.

Regis’s mouth was slick and hot and tasted like copper and wormwood. Geralt felt that he could have probed further, could have reawakened the beast that lurked just under the surface of Regis’s skin, but he did not. It was nothing more than a kiss. Nothing less than a kiss. For a moment Geralt considered giving in to the idea that at least for this one moment, everything was alright, but the blood was drying and the high was dissipating and the stench of burning Beauclair was already creeping back.

“Stay with me, tonight,” Geralt said. His right hand, bloodied but unhurt, pressed softly against Regis’s shoulder. Regis blinked slowly, his ancient eyes exhausted and full of sorrow. Then Regis's hand moved up, cupped Geralt’s hand.

“I will,” Regis replied. And through the fatigue and the pain, Geralt could feel himself smile.

“Thank you.”


End file.
